Re: %CHAR()

Barbara,

Yes, I know.  Tom's point is that %Char does not act the same way that
Move and MoveL do.  Which is true, it does not act the same way.

However, Tom is stating that the documentation is wrong, stating that
%Char is changing the value.  I think that Tom is confusing the behavior
of the Move and MoveL op codes with the value of the number.

I agree that the Character strings returned by Move/MoveL and %Char are
different.  But, living up to the documentation, the numeric values are
the same.  These all have the same *numeric* values.

'00123'
'  123'
'  123.00'
'00123.00'
'123'
123
123.00

That is what the documentation is stating, that the *numeric* value is not
being changed.  And yes, it is a Caveat Emptor.  Perhaps the documentation
could have the word "numeric" inserted before the word "value".  *shrug*

Regards,

Jim Langston

bmorris@ca.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> >Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 13:04:29 -0800
> >From: Jim Langston <jimlangston@conexfreight.com>
> >
> >I think we are talking semantics here.  They are talking about the value
> >of the number, not the byte representation, which you are describing.
> >
> >D Num1       S       6S  0
> >D Num2       S       6B  0
> >D Num3       S       6P  0
> >
> >Those are all numeric variables that can contain the *value* 123.  Each
> >stores them in a different way.  But the BIF works on all 3 of them.
> 
> Jim, Tom isn't talking about the byte representation of the numeric
> value.  He's saying that %char should behave similar to MOVE and MOVEL.
> As you know, MOVE puts the character representation of a numeric value
> into a character field, independent of the numeric format.  Packed, or
> zoned, if the numeric field has the value 1.234, the character field
> will have the value '1234'.  Some people might expect the result of
> MOVE from packed to char to give a result something like x'01234F', but
> it doesn't work that way.
> 
> Tom, do you think %char(-0012345) should return '001234N'?
> 
> Barbara Morris
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